Cemeteries must save for perpetual care

Some visitors to Cedar Hill Memorial Park are complaining about the condition… (Paul Muschick, THE MORNING…)

October 06, 2012|Paul Muschick | The Watchdog

Dave Ronemus and his wife are at the point in their lives where they are considering their final arrangements and deciding where they want to be buried.

They suspect they're not alone when they wonder whether their final resting place will be properly cared for, especially if their children don't live locally.

"Ten years from now, what's it going to look like? Who's going to maintain it?" said Ronemus, of Lower Nazareth Township. "This is a thing that I think a lot of people, especially older people, think about or worry about."

It was on their mind after they read my recent column about the condition of the mausoleum at Cedar Hill Memorial Park in Hanover Township, Lehigh County. They have relatives buried there, and they wanted to make sure I knew to add them to the growing list of people unhappy with the conditions.

I visited the mausoleum a few times in the past several months after hearing complaints. I found water on the floor. A section of the wall near the front door was missing some of its plaster. A piece of the frame was hanging off the rear doors. There were black marks on the wall that one visitor told me she fears is mold. There were cracks in the floor that had been patched.

Cemetery officials have not returned my repeated calls.

"It's not very comforting," former Allentown resident Louise Parisi told me last week. "You put your loved one there. It's opening a wound all over again."

She saw my column on Cedar Hill all the way in North Carolina, where she lives now. Her husband, John, is buried in the mausoleum. She told me she'd complained to Cedar Hill about water in the mausoleum several years ago.

"They just ignore the people," said Parisi, who told me she also had problems getting an American flag plaque put on her husband's crypt in a timely manner. "I'm in North Carolina. They figure, what are you going to do?"

If it will help you rest peacefully, I can tell you that cemeteries must plan for the perpetual care of their grounds. State law requires them to put money aside, including every time they sell a grave or crypt, with some exemptions for church cemeteries.

Richard Fenstermaker of Catasauqua would like to know why, then, Cedar Hill isn't spending money to address his repeated complaints about the mausoleum, where his wife is buried. When he and his wife bought their crypts nearly 20 years ago, they received written assurance they also were paying for upkeep.

"The purchase price includes all charges for perpetual care, maintenance and administration," their contract says.

Ronemus complimented Cedar Hill for taking good care of the cemetery grounds around the mausoleum, and wonders why the mausoleum isn't getting the same attention.

And Cedar Hill apparently has been spending money on perpetual care. But since cemetery officials still aren't returning my calls, I can't tell you what they've been spending it on.

State Real Estate Commission records show that from 2008 to 2011, Cedar Hill sold 392 lots, crypts, niches and mausoleum spaces valued at about $715,000.

Those sales resulted in about $70,000 in contributions to its perpetual care fund, according to the records. The withdrawals from the fund were more than twice that amount, about $182,000. The reports don't say what the money was spent on, other than that some went to taxes.

If the goal of the law is to assure people that cemeteries are appropriately caring for their grounds, then those reports shouldn't be limited to just an accounting of the funds.

A state lawmaker in Philadelphia shares my opinion. Rep. Ronald Waters wants to change the law to require cemeteries to disclose not just how much money they spend caring for their properties, but how they are spending it.

Through House Bill 2583, Waters wants to require cemeteries to file account information with the State Real Estate Commission showing "a detailed list and description of all expenditures." He also wants to require an audit every four years "to ensure that all moneys are properly managed, expenditures are permitted and the accounts are adequate to properly maintain the burial grounds."

The legislation was introduced in August and remains in the House Professional Licensure Committee.

If you have concerns about how a cemetery is caring for its grounds, contact a cemetery manager. If that doesn't work and you want to see if the cemetery has money for perpetual care, you can request its records from the State Real Estate Commission at 717-783-3658.

If you don't think the account has been handled properly, you can file a complaint with the Real Estate Commission. It has reprimanded cemeteries in the past, though none locally in at least the past four years, according to records I reviewed.

Parisi told me she's tired of Cedar Hill Memorial Park disregarding the concerns of people who paid a lot of money to carry out their loved ones' final wishes.

"I thought I was the only one complaining," she said. "I'm glad to hear there's other people."

The Watchdog is published Thursdays and Sundays. Contact me by email at watchdog@mcall.com, by phone at 610-841-2364 (ADOG), by fax at 610-820-6693, or by mail at The Morning Call, 101 N. Sixth St., Allentown, PA, 18101. Follow me on Twitter at mcwatchdog and on Facebook at Morning Call Watchdog.